We owe it to Winnie to make things right

At the risk of being misinterpreted, as we say farewell to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, we hope there will never again be anyone like her in South Africa.

Because, if another woman has to suffer for as long, in such awful conditions, for freedom and justice, then this country will have failed.

We may not be the brilliant success everyone hoped for back in the blinkered years of “The Rainbow Nation”, but South Africa is a markedly better country since apartheid was dismantled.

We are no longer based, as a nation, on a principle which has been declared a crime against humanity. That alone is the revolution which sometimes gets forgotten in our day-to-day anger.

And even though many hotheads today like to call for violence, the dismantling of apartheid averted a bloody civil war which would have left this country a smouldering ruin for generations to come.

Winnie was a vital part of that movement which brought about that revolution. And her suffering was a mirror of the suffering of millions of ordinary South Africans – suffering which cannot, and should not, ever be forgotten.

Even in her death, her power to further polarise our already deeply divided society remains strong.

As it was in the time of apartheid, her spirit ignites the emotions, because it refuses to remain silent about injustice. And injustice still scars this country.

There is a frightening, and growing, gulf between rich and poor.

There is a similar frightening, and apparently growing, divide between the races. There is a vocal demand for restitution – not only of land (which is a symbol of the broader dispossession of indigenous peoples) but of dignity and of opportunity.

As we inter her mortal remains today, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela is a reminder of our unfinished business.

We owe it to her and ourselves to make that right.

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